


01 - Sanitation

by Modderkin64



Series: Inkopolis Rising 0 - Extra Shorts [1]
Category: Splatoon
Genre: Laboratories, Loss of Identity, Pain, Unsettling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 20:27:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29459763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Modderkin64/pseuds/Modderkin64
Summary: An Octoling girl wakes up in the cold, white bowels of the Kamabo Corporation facilities. Struggle as she might, she can't escape from the sinister force intent on bending her to it's will.
Series: Inkopolis Rising 0 - Extra Shorts [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2163807
Kudos: 5





	01 - Sanitation

Some say nightmares are filled with shadows, dark imaginings that echo your worst fears. Some say that hell is a realm of fire and ash, where death and brimstone drown all forms of life. Some say the worst fate is death, and the infinite nothingness believed to be after it. There were all wrong. Nightmares are filled with bright lights, hell is made of cold, white, unfeeling walls. The worst fate, the most terrible thing someone could be condemned to, was to be taken into the underbelly of the Artificial God’s domain, a place no one came back from unchanged. Those subjected to the horrors within were said to be scrubbed clean of their former identities, reduced to emotionless husks only capable of carrying out the cryptic orders of their omniscient overlord. The worst fate on this world, no doubt was to be Sanitized in the depths of Kamabo Co..

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She was barely conscious, she could barely even remember her own name. At the moment, all she could think about was the cold all around her. The cold floor she was being dragged across. The cold air that felt unnaturally clean. The two pairs of cold, smooth hands that gripped her arms and dragged her down a white, metal hallway. She was struggling to come to her senses, but her arms felt numb. She tried to resist, to struggle, to speak out against her captors, but her body didn’t respond. Memories floated back to her as she grasped for something, anything, that she could hold onto. A mountain. An escape. A fight. Two memories came rushing to her, intertwined with each other. A tall Squidling, a brave hero. And a song, that resonated with her soul and was etched into her very being.

More memories came back. A fall. A room. Green-skinned Octolings walking towards them. They took her. They drugged her. She passed out. There were others. The tall Squidling. An older man. Another Octoling… someone important… her cousin. He reached for a name. Kairi. Her cousin. And she was… it started with a C… Cassidy. That was it. She tried to grasp at more memories, trying to piece together what happened. She escaped with Kairi. It was on a mountain. The tall Squidling saved them. The Squidling fought someone at the top of the mountain. Then they all fell down into it. The green Octolings took them. And now they were dragging her somewhere. She focused hard on the image of the hero… Three. She called herself Three. Her memories of Three gave her strength. Determination. (What would she do? How would she get out of this?) She looked around. There were two green Octolings dragging her. They didn’t seem to notice that she had regained consciousness. They were wearing thick sunglasses that glowed red over the eyes, and their eyes underneath were black with blue dots. They were unarmed. They were expressionless, seemingly without emotion. Like robots.

She tried to regain control of her body. She was able to move her fingers. And then her hands. The Octolings took no notice. They weren’t paying attention. She thought about the hero who saved her. She promised herself that it wouldn’t be in vain. She would see that hero again. She just had to escape. She concentrated, waiting for the opportune moment to strike… then kicked the Octoling on her right, and then wrested her arm free from the one on the left. And she ran. She bolted down the hallway, in the direction the Octolings had presumably dragged her from. She looked back at the two Octolings. They hadn’t moved. They just stared at her. Then the red on their shades flashed blue. And then back to red. And all hell broke loose. They dashed with surprising speed, chasing her like hunting dogs. They hissed at her and started closing the gap between themselves and their prey. One of the, once in range, spat a glob of teal Ink at her. As the Ink made contact with her skin, she screamed from the pain. Whereas usually contact with Ink a different colour than her own wasn’t too painful, causing a slight stinging sensation at worst, this Ink felt like acid, burning into her skin and polluting her own Ink. She nearly tripped but kept running. Her pursuers were getting way too close, she could almost feel their cold hands gripping her again. She couldn’t stop. She was a terrible fighter. She stood no chance in a fight. Tears streaked down her face as she was hit by another glob of teal Ink. She felt a clawed hand grab her leg, and she collapsed. She felt a painful impact on the back of her head and blacked out.

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When she came to, she was inside a glass cylinder. She was bound to the back of it, unable to move. There were thin tubes poking into her body like IVs. She wasn’t wearing anything except for an extremely thin sports bra and panties, exposing as much skin as possible for the tubes to penetrate while still maintaining some sense of decency. Outside the tube, she could see other figures in lab coats, mostly Inklings, monitoring several panels that displayed information about her vitals. She wasn’t alone in her plight, there were about four other Octolings in tubes identical to hers. The door at the far end of the room opened, and two figures walked through. One was a male Octoling, who for some reason she vaguely recognized. Her memories were very fuzzy, but she could just almost remember him, like a forgotten word on the tip of her tongue. The other figure was large and menacing, made of metal and walking on eight spider-like legs. Its upper body had no arms and was covered in tubes that teal Ink flowed through. It had no face, only a single eye-like camera. Where the stomach would be on an Inkling was a glass cylinder filled with teal Ink, and in the centre of it was a dark blue octopus tentacle tipped with greenish-yellow, the same as the green Octolings. The tentacle throbbed, pulsating like a heartbeat, and the teal Ink around it circulated through the tubes like blood. It was unsettling, it felt like a freak of nature. A freak of nature that nature didn’t create.

“The subjects are ready for Sanitation,” said one of the Inklings.

The Octoling laughed, and Cassidy was filled with a deep sense of unease at his voice. “You may begin the procedure.”

Teal Ink began to flow into the five glass tubes, filling them up like glasses of water. Cassidy’s skin burned as it made contact, and it felt worse than the acid feeling from before. Teal Ink slowly started to flow through the IV tubes, directly through her skin and into her Ink Layer. It hurt like hell. She screamed, and she could hear the other victims in the other tubes going through the same excruciating pain. She felt herself losing control of her body to the Ink, she felt it coursing through her and destroying her from the inside. Tears welled down her face as all thoughts in her head were suppressed by the Ink, the Ink that was becoming her. She tried to grasp herself, hold onto the mental aspects that made her Cassidy. But they were being drowned, the Ink dominating her consciousness. Her personality was being washed away, her memories scrubbed clean by the ever-consuming tide. She franticly reached for something, anything, to save her mindscape from the Ink. Two memories, shining like suns in her mindscape, refused to drown. The heavenly melody, the song etched into her soul that had granted her freedom, and the tall Squidling hero, the one who called herself Three. As she faded, she clutched the memory of Three, refusing to let it be drowned like everything else. She was forgetting her own name, her identity, but she refused to lose the image of her saviour. Her last thoughts, as the Ink took control, were of the short time she had spent with Three. And then she blanked out, and nothing remained.

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Her eyes opened. She couldn’t feel her body. She could only see and hear, with no control over anything. She clutched the memory of Three, and slowly things started to come back. In little bits and pieces, she began to remember. Her eyes, outside of her control, stared straight ahead. Her vision was obscured by a strange darkness. She heard the faint sound of someone talking, but she couldn’t hear any words. Her body, not in her control, started walking forwards. Looking through the darkness, she could see her skin had turned green. A recollection of the green Octolings surfaced. She remembered the thick shades on their head. Then came the horrifying realization: she had become one of them. The Ink had changed her, locked her out of her own body, and forced her to be a puppet controlled by a cryptic puppeteer. She tried to focus on her surroundings. She could see several figures in front of her, just barely visible in the darkness of the shades. She could make out one figure in particular, a tall Squidling, wearing a thick coat over a green sweater. She felt as if she recognized this figure but just couldn’t place it. Then, she realized. It was Three.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, this is my first entry for a series of extra shorts about my Splatoon Fan-series, Inkopolis Rising. I'm currently working on the main story, and I plan on releasing it when I feel I have enough completed. In the meantime, enjoy this short that dives into the details of the Sanitation process.  
> ~Modder


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